The production of polymers such as polyethylene requires a high purity feedstock of various components, including monomers and co-monomers. In order to offset some of the costs and maximize production, it can be useful to reclaim and/or recycle some feedstock components from an effluent stream resulting from the polymerization reaction. To accomplish this, the reclaimed effluent streams have conventionally either been routed through a purification process or redirected through other redundant processing steps.
Conventional attempts to industrially produce high purity feedstock components have required the operation of a series of process equipment including a flash chamber, a cyclone, a filtration unit, multiple distillation columns, compressors, refrigeration units, and various other equipment. As such, the equipment and energy costs associated with feedstock purification represent a significant proportion of the total cost for the production of such polymers. Further, the infrastructure required for producing, maintaining, and recycling high purity feedstock represents a significant portion of the associated cost. In particular, the presence of small polymer particles in the effluent can cause problems in the downstream equipment used for effluent separation and purification. Therefore, it is important to remove essentially all solid polymer particles and polymer fines from the effluent stream after it leaves the polymerization reactor but before it is subjected to any further separation, recovery, or recycle.